![\"last](\"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/12\/last-convoy-out-of-Iraq.jpg\")
<\/a><\/center><\/p>\nThe Washington Post<\/a> publishes an opinion post from Rosa Brooks, a law professor at Georgetown who thinks that Obama’s promise of no “boots on the ground” is a bad idea, because it plays into ISIS’ hands;<\/p>\n I wonder what that pledge really means \u2014 and just why we\u2019re supposed to find it reassuring. It\u2019s a pledge that seems to have everything to do with politics and little to do with the imperatives of strategy or security.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s what \u201cno boots on the ground\u201d apparently doesn\u2019t mean: It doesn\u2019t mean that no U.S. troops will be sent to Iraq or Syria. Reportedly there are already 1,600 U.S. military personnel in Iraq. True, they\u2019re present in an \u201cadvisory\u201d role, not in a combat role \u2014 but surely one lesson of Iraq and Afghanistan is that combat has a habit of finding its way to noncombat personnel. Enemy snipers and IEDs don\u2019t much care about a soldier\u2019s mission or occupational specialty, and you can bet that fighters of the self-proclaimed Islamic State would be content with the heads of a few American advisers. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n Here’s a story from Stars & Stripes<\/a> where that happened to some advisers in Afghanistan who hadn’t planned on being boots on the ground in a firefight against some Taliban fellows;<\/p>\n When early success against the militants left the Afghans with more territory than they could control, Gen. Abdul Raziq asked the Americans to cover for the last days of the mission.<\/p>\n The Americans agreed to help, and their advise-and-assist mission quickly turned to open combat.<\/p>\n \u201cOur role wasn\u2019t really to fight,\u201d said Lt. Graham Hennig, a platoon leader with Dragon Troop. \u201cIt just so happened that the fight crept it\u2019s way up to us.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Yeah, that happens, and it will happen in Syria and Iraq. But the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Martin Dempsey says that his plan will involve training 15,000 Syrian rebels, so he doesn’t need American troops, well, except the American trainers, says Stars & Stripes<\/a>;<\/p>\n Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, made the assessment to reporters a week after Congress approved a plan to begin training and equipping 5,000 moderate Syrian rebels to take on the Islamic State, which has seized about a third of the territory in Syria and neighboring Iraq.<\/p>\n \u201cFive thousand has never been the end state,\u201d Dempsey said. \u201cTwelve to 15,000 is what we believe they would need to recapture lost territory in eastern Syria\u201d that the Islamic State controls.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Yeah, a few hundred advisers and several thousand rebels, with no real allegiance to anything in particular who are supposed to be married to the idea of defeating ISIS. By the way, the Syrian rebels, who are fighting the Syrian government are supposed to fight against ISIS who is also fighting against the Syrian government. And Dempsey says that one of the jobs those advisers will be taking on is to help form political loyalties among the rebels. While a Syrian government still exists. And the Iranian clients, Hezbollah are in that mix – the same Hezbollah who blames us for the existence of their mortal enemies, the Israelis. A perfect situation for a lot of green-on-blue deaths.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"